NY state senator sounds alarm on ‘devastating impact' of Mamdani victory
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Yahoo
6 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Rep. Nancy Mace kicks off South Carolina GOP gubernatorial bid. She says she's 'Trump in high heels'
WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina is running for governor, entering a GOP primary in which competition for President Donald Trump's endorsement — and the backing of his base of supporters — is expected to be fierce. Mace, who last year won her third term representing South Carolina's 1st District, made her run official during a launch event Monday at The Citadel military college in Charleston. Mace told The Associated Press on Sunday she plans a multi-pronged platform aimed in part at shoring up the state's criminal justice system, ending South Carolina's income tax, protecting women and children, expanding school choice and vocational education and improving the state's energy options. Official filing for South Carolina's 2026 elections doesn't open until March, but several other Republicans have already entered the state's first truly open governor's race in 16 years, including Attorney General Alan Wilson, Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette and Rep. Ralph Norman. Both Wilson and Evette have touted their own connections to the Republican president, but Mace — calling herself 'Trump in high heels' — said she is best positioned to carry out his agenda in South Carolina, where he has remained popular since his 2016 state primary win helped cement his status as the GOP presidential nominee. Saying she plans to seek his support, Mace pointed to her defense of Trump in an interview that resulted in ABC News agreeing to pay $15 million toward his presidential library to settle a defamation lawsuit. She also noted that she called Donald Trump early this year as part of an effort to persuade GOP holdouts to support Rep. Mike Johnson to become House speaker. 'No one will work harder to get his attention and his endorsement,' she said. 'No one else in this race can say they've been there for the president like I have, as much as I have and worked as hard as I have to get the president his agenda delivered to him in the White House.' Mace has largely supported Trump, working for his 2016 campaign but levying criticism against him following the Jan. 6, 2021, violence at the U.S. Capitol, which spurred Trump to back a GOP challenger in her 2022 race. Mace defeated that opponent, won reelection and was endorsed by Trump in her 2024 campaign. A month after she told the AP in January that she was 'seriously considering' a run, Mace went what she called 'scorched earth," using a nearly hour-long speech on the U.S. House floor in February to accuse her ex-fiancé of physically abusing her, recording sex acts with her and others without their consent, and conspiring with business associates in acts of rape and sexual misconduct. Mace's ex-fiancé said he 'categorically' denied the accusations, and another man Mace mentioned has sued her for defamation, arguing the accusations were a 'dangerous mix of falsehoods and baseless accusations.' 'I want every South Carolinian to watch me as I fight for my rights as a victim," Mace said, asked if she worried about litigation related to the speech. "I want them to know I will fight just as hard for them as I am fighting for myself.' Mace, 47, was the first woman to graduate from The Citadel, the state's military college, where her father then served as commandant of cadets. After briefly serving in the state House, in 2020 she became the first Republican woman elected to represent South Carolina in Congress, flipping the 1st District after one term with a Democratic representative. "I'm going to draw the line, and I'm going to hold it for South Carolina, and I'm going to put her people first," Mace said. ___ Kinnard can be reached at
CNN
6 minutes ago
- CNN
Elon Musk awarded $29 billion pay package from Tesla
Tesla's board is giving CEO Elon Musk another huge pay day. The company's latest CEO pay package, worth about $29 billion, comes several months after a Delaware court rejected for a second time Musk's 2018 performance award following a shareholder lawsuit. Musk is currently appealing the order. In an letter to shareholders Monday, Tesla said that Musk has 'not received meaningful compensation for eight years' and that its 'legal efforts continue' to reinstate the 2018 pay package, adding that there's 'clear timeline for resolution.' The package would give Musk 96 million shares of Tesla, each of which trades at just over $300. Musk would have to pay $23.34 for each of those shares, equal to the amount he was expected to pay when he was first awarded his 2018 compensation package. 'Despite these legal challenges, we can all agree that Elon has delivered the transformative and unprecedented growth that was required to earn all milestones of the 2018 CEO Performance Award,' wrote board members Robyn Denholm and Kathleen Wilson-Thompson. 'This growth has translated into immense value generated for Tesla and all our shareholders.' Musk is not paid a cash salary or bonus for working at Tesla. Rather, Musk, one of the world's richest people, makes his money through lucrative packages of stock options that allow him to purchase millions of Tesla shares for a fraction of their market price. Musk is Tesla's largest individual shareholder — he owns about 13% of the company. The CEO caught the ire of many shareholders last year and earlier in 2025, however, when he shifted his focus to politics, spending huge sums of money and time trying to get Republican candidates elected for office. Musk was largely successful in his efforts, but his entry into politics backfired on Tesla. Political opponents have protested at Tesla dealerships throughout the year, and the company's sales have been falling sharply. President Donald Trump's domestic policy agenda also strips Tesla and other EV makers of tax incentive for vehicle sales and regulatory credits from other automakers – a major driver of Tesla's revenue. Shares of Tesla (TSLA) have fallen 25% this year. The stock rose nearly 3% in premarket trading. However, Musk has recently said he would return to his companies full time – a demand many shareholders had made of the CEO, given his considerable track record for success in the past. Monday's pay package keeps Musk at the helm of the struggling company. Musk has recently tried to remake Tesla, focusing the company on AI and robotics, shifting away from its reliance on car sales. 'Through Elon's unique vision and leadership, Tesla is transitioning from its role as a leader in the electric vehicle and renewable energy industries to grow towards becoming a leader in AI, robotics and related services,' the pair wrote. Tesla is currently in the midst of rolling out its much-publicized robotaxi service, albeit in a much slimmed down fashion than Musk promised a few years ago.
CNN
7 minutes ago
- CNN
Chief Justice John Roberts enabled Texas' gambit to gerrymander the state for the GOP
The brazen partisan redistricting underway in Texas, with Republicans attempting to entrench themselves in office and Democrats weighing a counter-offensive in blue states, was greenlit by the US Supreme Court six years ago. Chief Justice John Roberts, in an opinion for a 5-4 court, declared that federal judges could not review extreme partisan gerrymanders to determine if they violated constitutional rights. Roberts' opinion reversed cases that would have allowed such districts – drawn to advantage one political party over another irrespective of voters' interests – to be challenged as violations of the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech and association and the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of equal protection. The justices split among the familiar ideological lines, with the five conservatives ruling against partisan gerrymanders and the four liberals dissenting. 'Of all times to abandon the Court's duty to declare the law, this was not the one,' dissenting justices warned in 2019, 'The practices challenged in these cases imperil our system of government. Part of the Court's role in that system is to defend its foundations. None is more important than free and fair elections.' That decision in Rucho v. Common Cause has generated a new era of partisan rivalry with vast repercussions for American democracy. The decision resonates as profoundly as the Roberts Court's decision last year in Trump v. United States, which granted presidents substantial immunity from criminal prosecution (also delivered among partisan lines). Trump has taken the 2024 ruling as a blank check, tearing through democratic norms. The gerrymandering case also lifted a federal guardrail. Lawsuits challenging extreme partisan gerrymanders can still be brought before state court judges. But state laws vary widely in their protections for redistricting practices and state judges differ in their ability to police the thorny political process. Roberts may have failed to foresee the consequences in 2019 and then in 2024. Or, alternatively, perhaps he understood and simply believed the effects were not properly the concern of the federal judiciary. In his opinion, Roberts acknowledged the apparent unfairness of gerrymandered districts. 'Excessive partisanship in districting leads to results that reasonably seem unjust,' he wrote. But, he said, 'the fact that such gerrymandering is 'incompatible with democratic principles,' … does not mean that the solution lies with the federal judiciary.' The chief justice said no constitutional authority exists for judges to oversee the politics of redistricting, nor are there standards for their decisions, that is, to know when state lawmakers have gone too far in what is an inherently political process. Roberts wrote: ''How much is too much?' At what point does permissible partisanship become unconstitutional?' The current redistricting controversy arises from Trump's pressure on fellow Republicans to generate as many GOP-controlled districts as possible before the 2026 midterm elections for the US House of Representatives. Right now, the focus is on Texas where legislators broke from the usual cycle of post-census redistricting that happens every 10 years and suddenly proposed a new map intended to push several Democrats out of office and buttress the chances that Republicans keep their majority, now hanging by a thread, in Congress. The audacious Texas effort has prompted liberals to consider a counterattack in Democratic-controlled states such as California to create new maps that could boost their numbers. But politicians' effort to draw lines to their advantage have never been free of controversy. The paired cases before the justices six years ago involved extreme gerrymanders by Republicans in North Carolina and by Democrats in Maryland. Roberts was joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, whose vote was crucial. A year earlier, Kavanaugh had succeeded Justice Anthony Kennedy, who had previously left the door open to federal court challenges to partisan gerrymanders. Justice Elena Kagan, taking the lead for dissenters, insisted workable standards existed and had been used by lower US court judges. 'For the first time ever, this Court refuses to remedy a constitutional violation because it thinks the task beyond judicial capabilities. And not just any constitutional violation,' she wrote, pointing up the stakes. 'The partisan gerrymanders in these cases deprived citizens of the most fundamental of their constitutional rights: the rights to participate equally in the political process, to join with others to advance political beliefs, and to choose their political representatives,' Kagan added. She was joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who remains on the bench, and Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died in 2020, and Stephen Breyer, who retired in 2022. Echoing a line from redistricting precedent that appears apt as Texas legislators divide voters for predetermined results, Kagan wrote that a core principle of government is 'that the voters should choose their representatives, not the other way around.'
